I am four days into my Australia trip. A few major developments; my camera has officially died. My beloved little toy is now forcing me to enjoy things for the sake of enjoying them, and not for the sake of documenting it for others to see, or to look back on in the future, with some sort of nostalgia about a better time, while filtering out any bad parts. Foregoing the minor detail that in most cases I wasn’t there, I was behind a lens. I am now also with an entire new group of people, fifty one twenty something year olds. Since Australia is very much like America as far as culture and topography, and since most of the pictures I would take consist of things we could probably find in America, I will forego adding many pictures or videos, and just document my experience, in the medieval form of writing, and words.

The new group;

I noticed a few things with all these new people, and about myself. I felt for the first time in my life my age. We stop to think about our age, for in some weird way in our minds we haven’t aged or changed. Others can see us change, we have more responsibility, more money, more accountability, more experience, more weight, but in our own minds, we have stopped aging at the age of nineteen. For the first time I felt my age. The difference between the first and second group was palpable. The conversations, the way they acted, the lack of any type of substance, or persona, was amazing. Where were the nineteen year old students, agonizing over the future, arguing over the nuances of history, culture, and purpose? Where were the disaffected youthful struggles and fears we suffered through? I then remembered it was mid-April, those were the ones that were probably in school! I was stuck with the party ones. I then realized another thing about myself; I now needed to be mentally stimulated, before I can be sexually stimulated. None of these girls had any appeal to me. When did this happen? Was I becoming a woman? What kind of man gets turned off by silliness and immaturity? These are the things I should be using to my advantage, Who was I?

Sailing

Only half the group went sailing. I was meeting the group that was already together for the last two weeks, so I was the newcomer. I also was only meeting half the group. Sailing can only be described as an hour of intense amazement and wonder, of which twenty minutes of that is reflection, and two days of horrible living conditions, and suicidal boredom. After being in Asia in these luxury junc boats, with my own bedroom and cruise like facilities, this boat was about as comfortable as an easy chair made of pin cushions. The energy of the group was very splintered, no unity, or centric type atmosphere, but mostly a haphazard group of completely different personalities and background, thrown together to sleep in one big room, in a submarine style dorm room. The bunk bedswere essentially just one bed with a cupboard above it, no deck to sit on, just sprawled across the floor, and a bathroom that runs on miracles. The highlight of this trip, was visiting the great barrier reef, and snorkeling around it ( more regret about the lost camera, the one thing I wanted pictures of more than anything on  this trip) Seeing the great barrier reef, made it all worth it! I was mesmerized by the beauty, and world that lives below us, without having any immediate effect or interaction in our daily life.